Duty free items are currently sold on airline flights using modified food carts that are designed to stringent specifications dictated by the dimensions of the aircraft and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. Existing airline food carts are generally retrofitted for such duty free items and are generally susceptible to tampering and pilfering by a number of parties including caterers, passengers, and other no-authorized personnel. It is difficult to secure such carts and to assure that only authorized personnel are gaining access to the contents inside such carts.
These airline carts are generally not locked and fail to provide an indication of tampering before the carts are transferred to authorized personnel. Even if such carts are lockable, once authorized personnel open the cart, there is no assurance or means of preventing pilfering and further tampering with the cart. Cart doors typically have pins on top and bottom portions of their doors to help “lock” the cart doors to the frame of such carts, but unauthorized personnel have been known to pry pins down or away to enable access to the carts. No simple solution is known to securely lock the doors to the frame of the cart that further prevents pilfering or unauthorized access.